Educasting from Ireland

Flickr Just Got A Million More

FLICKR -- In Tipperary Institute, we program with the Flickr API--just like hundreds of other web developers. That process just got cheaper by 50% and the number of people using Flickr's social networking probably jumped by 30,000 since yesterday's announcement that the Pro accounts became as affordable as a monthly phonecard top-up in Ireland. Nearly 40% of all those with Irishblogs use Flickr. I think it's the biggest time sink on the planet and well worth the slideshows it generates. I suspect there will be millions more people using Flickr for summer holiday snapshots now that this new pricing plan has hit the mainstream press. More details:

About Photoshop Elements

ADOBE -- The biggest feature in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 is its ability to handle photos in camera raw format. This format preserves the camera image as a "negative" which mean it lets you open the images and edit them without any kind of loss in the image. Photoshop Elements has a Camera Raw dialog box that lets you save the settings for a specific camera or a specific lighting condition and reuse them when opening another camera raw file or a batch of camera raw files.

Why digital cameras are better

Check out these 10 pages to find out why Digital is the way of today.

1. Answerbag explains the advantages and disadvantages of digital still cameras.

2. http://www.digital-cameras-review.com/advantages_digital_cameras.html gives a positive, descriptive look at digital photography.

3. http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/uwphoto/page/01-e.html from Canon Corporation looks at the advtages of digital camerasfor underwater photography.

4. http://www.rlrouse.com/digital-camera.html explains why digital cameras are better than the old film models.

5. National Gepgraphic Traveler Heather Morgan Shott explains why digital cameras "shine".

6. Jeremy McCreary explains what you need for digital photography if you are a landscape photographer.

7. http://www.digital-camera-reviews.info/: This web page links to reviews of digital cameras by consumers.

8. http://www.graphic-design.com/Waldron/DigitalPhoto.html>: D'Lynn Waldron writes about the advantages and also the disadvantages of Digital Still Cameras.

9. Rob Galbraith compares digital photography with film, and offers advantages on either side.

10. http://www.geocities.com/caseallen/travel/digitaladv.html. Casey Allen offers four basic advantages of Digital cameras.

Advantages of a digital camera

As multimedia student studying photography I have the following as being some advantages of using a digital camera.

• You don't have to keep buying film.


• Memory can hold more photos than most films.


• Only develop the photos you want.


• Can be edited easier using photo edition software.


• Photos can be published to the web easily, flickr.com is a very good website for this.


• Normal, black and white and sepia can all be taken without changing film.

Digital Negative Format

ADOBE -- One of the most important facets of the multimedia software suite installed on Tipperary Institute classroom workstations is Photoshop CS. This image editing program is quickly establishing another digital photo format as an industry standard, the Digital Negative specification.

Danny O'Brien's Site of the Moment

IRISH TIMES -- "My favourite site to explore at the moment is Flickr," says Danny O'Brien. He explains why--and his opinion resonates.

Watermarks

TAINT -- We spend a few hours devising logos as images that we use as parts of watermarks on web items. Photoshop allows you to overlay one image on top of another, using transparency to control the opacity of the watermark. Justin Mason suggests a lower-cost alternative. It's important to watermark to protect copyright.

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Justin Mason -- "image watermarking with pamcomp"
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Camera Lucida

WSJ -- The world remembers Henri-Cartier Bresson and the wonderful years of images composed through the lens of his camera. Bernard-Henri Levy puts the thoughts to print.

The first time I saw Henri Cartier-Bresson was in 1989, in Paris, during a street demonstration against the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

I can still see him, lost in the crowd, very tall, very elegant, blue eyes, red scarf, the very silhouette of a bird of prey, dreaming, grouching, his indignation contained, the dry passion of an old anarchist-on-a-tightrope.

I can still see him, in his hand the legendary old Leica that, once in a while, very quickly, he would bring to his eye: he had at the time, and for quite a while already, given up photography; I'm not a photographer anymore, he would say; I'm a watercolorist, an aquarellist, a painter, anything you want, but I'm absolutely not a photographer anymore. Sure, but the Leica was still right there, hunting for the right angle, a reflection, an unknown face, a smile, a cry -- never better than on that day did I understand to which extent the little black box had become, for him, another eye, a third eye, a physical extension of his own, the quasi-Kantian frame that enabled him to dissect reality, and to see it.

RAW photos

PC MAG -- There are big implications when shooting photographs in RAW format. Simply stated, going from RAW to JPG in digital is like going from negative to positive with film.

Everyman photo contest

EVERYMAN -- The Everyman Annual Photo Contest accepts submissions up to October 4, 2004. There are small prizes available. The annual contest celebrates the work of amateurs. That's good because there aren't enough showcases for budding photographers.